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There is a principle having intellection of the external and
another having self-intellection and thus further removed from
duality.
Even the first mentioned is not without an effort towards the
pure unity of which it is not so capable: it does actually
contain its object, though as something other than itself.
In the self-intellective, there is not even this distinction of
being: self-conversing, the subject is its own object, and thus
takes the double form while remaining essentially a unity. The
intellection is the more profound for this internal possession of
the object.
This principle is the primally intellective since there can be no
intellection without duality in unity. If there is no unity,
perceiving principle and perceived object will be different, and
the intellection, therefore, not primal: a principle concerned
with something external cannot be the primally intellective since
it does not possess the object as integrally its own or as
itself; if it does possess the object as itself- the condition of
true intellection- the two are one. Thus [in order to primal
intellection] there must be a unity in duality, while a pure
unity with no counterbalancing duality can have no object for its
intellection and ceases to be intellective: in other words the
primally intellective must be at once simplex and something else.
But the surest way of realizing that its nature demands this
combination of unity and duality is to proceed upwards from the
Soul, where the distinction can be made more dearly since the
duality is exhibited more obviously.
We can imagine the Soul as a double light, a lesser corresponding
to the soul proper, a purer representing its intellective phase;
if now we suppose this intellective light equal to the light
which is to be its object, we no longer distinguish between them;
the two are recognised as one: we know, indeed, that there are
two, but as we see them they have become one: this gives us the
relation between the intellective subject and the object of
intellection [in the duality and unity required by that primal
intellection]: in our thought we have made the two into one; but
on the other hand the one thing has become two, making itself
into a duality at the moment of intellection, or, to be more
exact, being dual by the fact of intellection and single by the
fact that its intellectual object is itself.
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